BIO Protocol is a platform for funding and commercializing decentralized science (DeSci), unlocking biotech innovation and access to science funding.
BIO empowers global communities of patients, scientists and biotech investors to collectively fund, build and own tokenized biotech projects and intellectual property (IP).
Problems with scientific funding:
Time-Consuming Funding Processes: Scientists spend up to 80% of their time applying for funding, detracting from valuable research and slowing progress in critical fields.
Valley of Death: Many promising early-stage discoveries never reach commercialization due to high risks, resource gaps, and lack of support, stalling biotech advancements.
Concentration of Funding: Due to a concentration of funding in a few geographic hubs, most of the world’s scientific talent is left untapped.
Complex IP and Licensing Barriers: Fragmented IP ownership and challenging licensing agreements hinder collaboration and prevent biotech innovations from reaching the market quickly.
Low Patient Access: Most research happens detached from patient communities, creating misaligned incentives between scientists and patients.
BIO addresses the problems through:
Decentralized Funding: Allows anyone to invest in promising biotech projects.
Capital Efficiency: Pool resources (patient data, capital, labor) to lower the cost of biotech innovation.
Diversified Portfolio: BIO bundles together portfolios of biotech projects, reducing the risk of biotech investing through diversification.
Global Talent & Capital Pool: Enables scientists, researchers and investors worldwide to contribute labor or capital to a specific therapeutic area or drug.
Shared IP Ownership: Represents co-ownership of Biotech DAOs and scientific IP as tokens.
Liquid Markets: Provides early liquidity for traditionally illiquid biotech assets.
Open Access: Removes gatekeeping in scientific funding and decision-making.
BIO is the governance token of BIO Protocol, which is used in the following functions:
Governance & Decentralization: The BIO token grants holders governance rights in the BIO Protocol and meta-governance across BioDAOs in the network.
Whitelisted Access: The BIO Token gives holders whitelisted access to BioDAO funding rounds and tokenized IP on the network.
Curation: BIO holders choose with BioDAOs are launched via the BIO Launchpad, and receive support from the network in terms of funding and liquidity.
Network BioDAOs: BIO represents a basket of DeSci tokens as BioDAOs in the network contribute a percentage of their initial token supply to the protocol in exchange for funding, liquidity and acceleration services.
Protocol-Owned Liquidity: BIO Protocol provides liquidity with BioDAO tokens and IP-Tokens in its treasury, earning trading fees from its protocol-owned liquidity (POL)
BIO Protocol has conducted multiple rounds of private placement financing and public placement financing：
Private Fundraises
In Pre-Seed Round, the project has raised $0.9M at ~$35M valuation
In Seed Round, the project has raised $1.4M at ~$69M valuation
Public Fundraises: The public fundraising process was the public BIO Genesis Auction. It consisted of 3 rounds:
In Genesis Round 1, the project has raised $6.2M at ~$85M valuation
In Genesis Round 2, the project has raised $18.2M at ~$142M valuation
In Genesis Round 2.5, the project has raised $3.5M at ~$219M valuation
Key metrics (as at December 24th, 2024)
1. What is BIO Protocol?
1.1. Project Mission & Value Proposition
BIO is a launchpad and liquidity protocol for Decentralized Science (DeSci). The protocol accelerates biotechnology by giving global communities of patients, scientists and biotech investors the ability to collectively fund, build and own tokenized biotech projects and intellectual property (IP).
Project Mission
BIO Protocol's mission is to bring groundbreaking science to life faster by allowing biotech to be funded and commercialized by individuals instead of institutions.
Value Proposition
BIO’s launchpad and liquidity protocol allow liquid markets and onchain communities to efficiently form around the best early-stage science. BIO brings structure and incentives to distributed R&D efforts, creating valuable scientific IP outside the traditional confines of pharma.
1.2 Existing Products
BioDAO Launchpad
8 DAOs have gone through the first iteration of the BIO acceleration program, with a cumulative market cap of over $300M.
The most recent BioDAO launch was 13X oversubscribed, raising over $6.8M in initial funding.
Acceleration and BioDAO Tooling
BIO is supporting individuals and communities to successfully establish and launch a BioDAO with active support from legal and governance frameworks, to branding and Web3 tooling, before they go onto the BIO Launchpad.
Additionally, BIO supports the BioDAOs through close collaboration with catalyst and pump.science, raising funds for IPTs, funding experiments and deploy AI agents specific to their research topics.
$7.37M has been deployed into research, creating a Tokenized IP portfolio for these DAOs worth more than $43M today.
Liquidity Protocol - Bootstrapped through the BIO Genesis
Total Value Locked (TVL): $50M+ in BioDAO tokens and ETH used to create liquidity for DeSci.
Ecosystem Token Holders: ~ 29,800
1.3 Technical Details
BIO brings cutting-edge DeFi mechanics to DeSci, borrowing curation and liquidity mechanisms from platforms/protocols like pump.fun and Virtuals.
At the core of BIO is its launchpad and liquidity protocol which allows the BIO community to decide which DAOs receive support in the form of funding, liquidity and incentives during launch and throughout the lifetime of the DAO.
The BIO Launchpad has three distinct phases:
Curation: BIO holders vote to determine if a project will be allowed to launch via BIO Protocol. Curators pledge their BIO to a BioDAO they find promising.
Acceleration (Funding): This stage allows a project to raise its first funding from users. This may happen through an auction or a bonding curve mechanism.
Separation (AMM liquidity): The final stage releases the project into the open market supported by deep onchain liquidity pools. BIO Protocol acts as a liquidity engine with its BIO/BioDAO liquidity pool pairings.
2. Token Sales and Economics
2.1 Token Distribution
*Molecule AG: Molecule AG initially created BIO as an internal project before it was spun out into its own Protocol. Molecule AG is the creator of IP tokenization frameworks utilized by DAOs to bring research assets on-chain.
2.2 Token Release Schedule
3. Roadmap & Updates
3.1 Completed Milestones & Current Roadmap
Jan 2025
CEX listing
DeSci AI Agents
$BIO TGE on Ethereum
$BIO on Solana
$BIO on Base
$BIO/BioDAOs Liquidity Pools
Long COVID Labs launch
New BIODAOs announcement
Curetopia launch
Feb 2025
BIO Launchpad v1 and curation mechanism on EVM chains
BIO Launchpad v1 on Solana
3.2 Commercial and Business Development Progress
Molecule AG: Partnered with the developer of the IP-NFT and IP tokenization frameworks utilized by BIO Protocol.
ResearchHub: Partnered with the leading decentralized peer review platform to enable integrated services for BIO’s network of BioDAOs.
Pump.Science: Partnered with decentralized research protocol to enable integrated services for BIO’s network of BioDAOs.
Pfizer Ventures: Venture arm of the pharma giant backs BIO Network BioDAO VitaDAO, and helps channel scientific talent into network BioDAOs.
University Labs: Scientific IP created in partnership with leading university research labs like Newcastle University, Imperial College of London & University of Copenhagen.
4. Community